# Are anti-hunters especially outraged by female hunters? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 18, 2015, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991 "2015-04-18T15:04:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/41 "2015-04-20T21:09:35Z")
And again, I am not justifying the extra backlash, just trying to explain why it happens. Why do _you_ think it happens? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/42 "2015-04-20T21:11:58Z")
I’d say sexism definitely has something to do with it. [Women do receive more harassment online](http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/online-abuse-affects-men-women-differently-wcz/). Gamergate is a good example. Chris Kluwe, a football player for the NFL rips into gamergate and isn’t doxxed, but Felicia Day, famous female actress and geek icon says she’s afraid of it and [gets doxxed immediately](http://gawker.com/felicia-day-says-shes-afraid-of-gamergate-immediately-1649790900). There’s the mild “benevolent” sexism of thinking women should be more delicate and not engage in ugly, masculine pursuits like hunting. But the people who viciously harass the female hunters are much more likely to be sexist, and I would doubt they’d go after male hunters with the same vehemence. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/43 "2015-04-20T21:24:53Z")
> [@Sam\_Lowry](#): > > I’d say sexism definitely has something to do with it. [Women do receive more harassment online](http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/online-abuse-affects-men-women-differently-wcz/). Gamergate is a good example. This is a different phenomenon, I think. The abuse directed at these hunters seems to be coming from women as much as from men. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/44 "2015-04-21T00:45:36Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > Yes, that’s true. Did you think I would disagree? No, but one would hope that you would note that it’s not a useful metric at the individual level. Are you particularly impressed and go around congratulating every male who is able to be a reasonable, non-child-molesting person? I think you would agree that, that’s silly. And if you did do it, the men who you congratulated would feel like you were being rather sexist to assume their natural proclivities based on some bizarre overgeneralization that’s a minor statistic leaning out of the norm, rather than thinking of them as full humans with their own personalities. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/45 "2015-04-21T01:35:11Z")
Everyone has their own personalities of course. But that doesn’t mean we don’t develop certain gender-based expectations, informed by experience. If these women are not being treated more harshly because they contravene expectations, then what is _your_ explanation for the abuse they are getting? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/46 "2015-04-21T01:53:05Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > Everyone has their own personalities of course. But that doesn’t mean we don’t develop certain gender-based expectations, informed by experience. Which version of expectation are you using? 1. I expect him to do something, because that’s what’s required. 2. I expect him to do something, based on previous behavior. That you say, “informed by experience”, would imply that you’re going for the second. But if that’s the case, then you would be annoyed with yourself, for having mis-guessed what the person was going to do. There would be no reason for you to be annoyed with someone doing the unexpected. If you mean the first one, though, who’s requiring it? > [@](#): > > If these women are not being treated more harshly because they contravene expectations, then what is _your_ explanation for the abuse they are getting? I said in post [22](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18299354&postcount=22), but I’m coming around to people being sexist. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/47 "2015-04-21T02:28:59Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I said in post [22](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18299354&postcount=22), but I’m coming around to people being sexist. So why are women so upset at these pictures? Because the negative comments seem at least equally divided between men and women. > [@](#): > > Which version of expectation are you using? > > 1. I expect him to do something, because that’s what’s required. > 2. I expect him to do something, based on previous behavior. > > That you say, “informed by experience”, would imply that you’re going for the second. But if that’s the case, then you would be annoyed with yourself, for having mis-guessed what the person was going to do. There would be no reason for you to be annoyed with someone doing the unexpected. Well to be clear, I am not annoyed with anybody. I am trying to understand why some people seem to be more annoyed by women hunters than by men hunters. My best guess is that women hunters run contrary to the expectation that women are nurturing. By the way, this is an expectation that seems to have some science behind it. (Trigger warning. Link coming which suggests men and women may not be indistinguishable.) [Maybe we are different: New book argues female brain wired to nurture](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-08-21-female-brain_x.htm) And again, note that women and men seem to be unloading on these hunters in equal measure. So if it’s sexism at work, it’s a sexism that both genders seem to share. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/48 "2015-04-21T02:39:42Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > So why are women so upset at these pictures? Because the negative comments seem at least equally divided between men and women. I don’t believe that I said that “men” like to look at pretty women. ---
**Author:** ![CharlieKelly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@CharlieKelly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CharlieKelly)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/49 "2015-04-21T08:54:33Z")
Annoyance is a mild term…the sport is barbaric and a real insight into the distorted mind of a psycho-path. Women or men alike… ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/50 "2015-04-21T12:02:45Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I said in post [22](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18299354&postcount=22), but I’m coming around to people being sexist. can you imagine the abuse she’d be getting if she had said something online about video games? ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/51 "2015-04-21T13:18:29Z")
My WAG is that **Sage Rat** is correct. It’s not like Ricky Gervais spends time on hunting forums looking for pictures of giraffe hunters to get upset about. In order for him to get outraged about a picture, the picture needs to go semi-viral _first_. Are there a lot of pictures of male hunters posing with giraffes that are frequently shared? There’s certainly no shortage of them in existence, but you have to [look for them](https://www.google.com/search?q=giraffe+hunting&tbm=isch). So I suspect that male hunters share a picture of a female hunter posing with an animal, because “Check out this hot chick who likes guns and hunting just like we do!” or “This is a _real_ woman, am I right fellers?” And then eventually Ricky Gervais sees it and it goes global. We can probably still blame sexism for this anyway, but it’d be interesting to run some analytics on the spread of this picture and see where it initiated. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/52 "2015-04-21T15:42:49Z")
You can add [Eva Shockey](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/17/why-female-big-game-hunters-become-hunted-online-in-a-way-men-dont/) to the list of female hunters who have been the target of outrage. Her case is a good one. She’s the daughter of Jim Shockey. He’s been a famous hunter for decades with endorsements, TV shows, etc. Yet I’ve never heard of him being targeted the way that this daughter has. > [@](#): > > Whatever is behind the vitriol, it flowed in the direction of Eva Shockey last November, after she posted photos of a freshly killed, 510-pound North Carolina black bear. > > The Canadian hunter, who co-hosts an Outdoor Channel show with her father, was hammered by critics, some of whom wished for her the same thing she’d done to the bear. > > “I’ve had 5,000-plus death threats in one day,” she told the Blaze. > > In a separate interview with Field & Stream, Shockey said: “My dad warned me before I even got involved with the show that I was going to have to deal with anti-hunters. I’m a huge target for them because I’m a smiley young woman, and I’m different than who they’re used to dealing with.” > > Francis has her own theories about why female hunters regularly find themselves in the crosshairs of critics: “I believe that the anti-hunters specifically attack women because they view women as an easier target,” she told [HuntingLife.com](http://HuntingLife.com) last month. It doesn’t help that Eva is young and very attractive. Her father looks and sounds like you’d expect him too. She doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/53 "2015-04-21T16:14:09Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > So why are women so upset at these pictures? Because the negative comments seem at least equally divided between men and women. It’s not uncommon for women to be participants, or even the primary antagonists, in misogynistic cultural practices. If there’s a cultural expectation that women be “nurturing,” the women who have most strongly internalized that expectation are often the most outraged by other women who avoid or subvert that expectation. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/54 "2015-04-21T16:17:10Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > This is a different phenomenon, I think. The abuse directed at these hunters seems to be coming from women as much as from men. Women can be sexist against women, just like minorities can be racist against minorities, and gay people can be homophobic. Someone can be overall for equality, but unthinkingly have some sexist assumptions, like that women shouldn’t do X and Y or that they should do Z instead of men. I’m a woman, and I don’t want to be treated differently than men, or thought of as more delicate than men. Some women don’t question being thought of as more delicate or being put on a pedestal because it’s just what they are used to and have never thought about it. Or they’ve followed the rules about what proper women do and get upset when they see other women break the rules and act like men. If someone is criticizing a female hunter and not giving equal criticism to male hunters, that doesn’t make them a raging misogynist, or even sexist at all necessarily. But overall, in all of social media and the culture at large when there’s a huge amount of criticism and harassment of female hunters and not much of male hunters, I have got to think that sexism is a part of it. It’s obviously not the worst sexism, to treat female hunters harsher than men, because women “should be more nurturing” or “more ladylike” or whatever. But each little bit adds up and should be called out. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/55 "2015-04-22T18:53:50Z")
This isn’t meant to be _the_ answer, just _an_ answer. There’s a list of shit we’re willing to accept within reason from men, including annoying macho posturing. There a distaff list we’re willing to accept within reason from women: including princess diva entitlement. But society doesn’t like it when sexes cross shit lists. The opposite list-switchin ire from the OP is displayed when people say they don’t mind gays but they hate swish. For women, this is the eternal dilemna. See how fantasy heroines deal with it: they sword fight ogres just like the men, but they have to offset this with hypersexualization: wearing a skimpy leather bustier at the same time. No burning off the right breast for these Amazons. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/56 "2015-04-23T00:10:31Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > See how fantasy heroines deal with it: they sword fight ogres just like the men, but they have to offset this with hypersexualization: wearing a skimpy leather bustier at the same time. No burning off the right breast for these Amazons. I think that has more to do with said stories being written (or at the very least illustrated) by men. witness the cover of the _Spider Woman_ where she was drawn with clothing which was essentially painted on and in a pose which suggested she was ready to be taken from behind, so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/57 "2015-04-23T10:56:53Z")
FTR, I don’t think Gervais posted that picture in a misogynistic way. He had posted very similar pictures of men with their kills before. But still, this has gone viral more than the others (at least one of which did go viral, or I wouldn’t have seen it). And the only reasonable explanation is that it was because it was due to the gender of the person involved. We do expect women to be more nurturing, yes. It would, to be honest, be a little weird if we didn’t, given that women are the ones who get pregnant and breastfeed. But WRT hunting endangered animals, it is different. Most people don’t like seeing anyone doing that. When it comes to women hunting in an ordinary environment (like the picture of Sarah Palin above) it’s not that weird because she’s hunting within her own habitat and it’s just what people do. If there’s an outcry about women hunting in their own habitat, a la Sarah Palin, then I’ll think sexism. That probabaly does actually happen. FTR I’m a vegetarian. Not a vegan. I’ve just drawn my lines one place and other people draw their lines other places. I instinctually think that killing for your food is better than just having it delivered to your table, but I also acknowledge that if you really wanted to eat meat but lessen suffering then having an animal be hunted, running and panicking, after a lifetime of doing so, is not necessarily kinder than raising them with a decent amount of space to almost adulthood or sometimes beyond adulthood (like some meat animals - cows especially) and then killing them very quickly. The former is better, morally, for the hunter, the latter is better, in the way it’s killed and the way it lives, for the prey. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991/58 "2015-04-23T22:15:04Z")
> [@Honey](#): > > I think I may be sexist, because it actually does bother me more when I hear of a woman hunter. I think of females being a bit softer, more caring (right or wrong). I don’t like the thought of hunting at all, but I really don’t see how a woman could kill something. I’ll admit to this. The fems are supposed to do the cooking, the pleasing, and the tending to the kids. Women killing things is a perversion, and _attractive ones_ doing it (instead of looking pretty at home) is an abomination. I should explain–I was raised to believe this. I am quite far from that mindset now. But for all the intellectualizing I can do to keep myself open-minded there’s still the knee-jerk instinctive reaction I have to overcome. I can totally understand how the image could get someone rabidly offended. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anti-hunters-especially-outraged-by-female-hunters/717991.md?page=2)